Active Power in General No. 1 of Essays on the Active Powers of Man Thomas Reid Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type. First launched: September 2004 Last amended: October 2007 Contents Chapter 1: The notion of active power 2 Chapter 2: The notion of active power (continued) 7 Chapter 3: Locke’s account of our idea of power 11 Chapter 4: Hume’s opinion concerning our idea of power 13 Chapter 5: Can beings that have no will or understanding have active power? 17 Chapter 6: The efficient causes of the phenomena of nature 21 Chapter 7: The extent of human power 25 Active Power in General Thomas Reid Introduction The division of the human mind’s faculties into understand- instincts, their appetites [= ‘desires’], and their emotions; but ing and will is very ancient, and has been generally adopted. it seems that they necessarily have to follow the strongest The •understanding is taken to cover all our powers of impulse ·of the moment· and have no capacity for self-control. thinking and believing, the •will to cover all our powers So we don’t blame them for anything they do, and we have of acting. no reason to think that they blame themselves. They may be Obviously God intended us to act as well as to think. And •trained through •discipline, but they can’t be •governed by so he gave us certain active powers; though limited in many •law. There is no evidence that they have any idea of law, or ways, they are suitable for our rank and place in the created of the obligations that law imposes. world. A man can act from motives that are higher ·than any Our business is to manage these powers, by •aiming to that move the lower animals·. He sees one course of action achieve the best results, •planning the best way we can as having dignity and value, and another as being base and ·for achieving those results·, and •carrying out such plans low; and lower animals can’t make such distinctions. vigorously and conscientiously. This is true wisdom; it’s A man can see it to be his duty to take the worthy and hon- what we exist for. ourable course, whether his appetites and emotions count Anything virtuous and praiseworthy must consist in for it or against it. When he does his duty at the expense of the right use of our power ·of action·; anything vicious satisfying his strongest appetites or emotions, this doesn’t and blameworthy must consist in the abuse of that power. lessen the merit of his conduct; on the contrary, it greatly When something lies outside the range of our power it can’t increases it, and when he thinks it over he experiences an be attributed to us as a basis for either blame or praise. inner satisfaction and triumph—something that the lower These are self-evident truths; any unprejudiced mind will animals aren’t capable of. When he acts the other way, immediately and unshakably accept them. ·following appetite or emotion at the expense of duty·, he has What makes knowledge valuable is this: it widens the a sense of demerit, of which the lower animals are equally scope of our power ·of action· and directs us in our use of incapable. it. ·You may find it odd that I make action the basis of all So: since man’s •active powers are such an important value, with knowledge being of value only through its help to part of his make-up, and make him stand out so clearly from action; but I stand by that·, because all the honour, dignity other animals, they deserve to be the subject of philosophical and worth of a man consists in his using rightly his power of inquiry just as much as do his •intellectual powers. action, and all his vice, corruption and depravity consists in A sound knowledge of our powers—intellectual and his misusing and perverting that power. active—is of real importance to us just to the extent that it Our active powers distinguish us from the lower animals helps us to employ them properly. Everyone must acknowl- as much as our powers of thinking do. edge that to act properly is much more valuable than to The various actions of lower animals are triggered by their think soundly or to reason sharply. 1 Active Power in General Thomas Reid 1: The notion of active power Chapter 1: The notion of active power It may seem unnecessary and time-wasting to consider When men try to define such things, they throw no light carefully what ‘active power’ means. The word ‘power’ isn’t on them. They may give a synonymous word or phrase, a technical term; it is a common word, used in everyday but it will probably involve replacing the defined word by speech even by ordinary uneducated people. We find words something worse. If they insist on defining, the definition with the same meaning in all other languages; and there will either •be based on a hypothesis—·which means that is no reason to think that someone could understand the rather than merely spelling out the meaning of the defined English language but not understand ‘power’. I believe all term, it will express some theory about whatever it is that this is true; and that some justification should be given for the term stands for·—or •it will darken the subject rather an attempt ·such as mine· to explain a word that is as well than throw light on it. understood as ‘power’ is. [In this paragraph Reid quotes a definition in Latin; the English given The justification is that this word, so well understood by here is the unsympathetic translation used by Locke in Essay III.iv.8.] common folk, has been darkened by philosophers. This is The Aristotelian definition of motion, which says that motion one case among many in which philosophers have found is ‘the act of a being in power, so far forth as in power’, great difficulties in something that seems perfectly clear to has rightly been criticised by modern philosophers. But I the rest of mankind. think it is matched ·in absurdity· by what a famous modern This has happened all the more easily ·in the special philosopher has given us as the most accurate definition of case of power· because power is so much a thing of its own belief, namely: kind, and is so simple in its nature, that it can’t be logically a belief is ‘a lively idea, related to or associated with a defined. [The thought behind this remark is as follows. A paradigm present impression’. of logical definition would be the equation of ‘square’ with ‘equilateral And according to the same philosopher, ·equally absurdly·, rectangle’; and what this definition does is to take the •complex concept memory is ‘the faculty by which we repeat our impres- of square and spell it out into its simpler constituents, the concepts of sions, so that they retain considerable degree of their having sides of equal length and of being rectangular. Reid is saying first vivacity, and are somewhat intermediate between that the concept of power is •simple, meaning that it isn’t a complex of an idea and an impression’. [Hume, Treatise I. iii.7 and simpler elements that might be laid out in a logical definition.] I.i.3.] It is common knowledge that many things that we un- Euclid, if we are to trust his editors, tried to define derstand perfectly, and of which we have clear and distinct straight line, unity, ratio, and number. But these definitions conceptions, can’t be logically defined. Nobody has ever are worthless. Indeed, they may not even be Euclid’s, for tried to define magnitude [= ‘size’], yet this is understood as they are never once quoted in his Elements, and are useless. distinctly, and as universally, as any word. We can’t logically So I shan’t try to define ‘active power’, exposing myself define thought, duration, number, or motion. to the same criticism. Rather, I shall make ·five· remarks 2 Active Power in General Thomas Reid 1: The notion of active power that may lead us to the conception of active power that we a consciousness ·of power·, for the belief could be wrong, have in our own minds, instead ·of trying to understand that whereas consciousness always tells the truth. Thus, it conception by attending to verbal definitions·. sometimes happens that a man who is struck with paralysis (1) Power isn’t something we perceive through any of our while he sleeps doesn’t know when he wakes that he has external senses, nor is it something we are aware of through lost the power of speech until he tries to speak; he doesn’t consciousness. know whether he can move his hands and arms until he There’s no need for me to prove that power isn’t seen or tries to move them; and if without making such an attempt heard or touched or tasted or smelled.